Blame Canada

Hurray for Saturday! I slept in until 9 and felt guilty for it so I decided to make it worth the time I had left. I honestly had no idea just how much I would be making up for this lost time of sleeping. But more on that a little later. I got up and had some breakfast and then set about to doing my homework for class and a little bit of studying. It was a much nicer day than Friday and it was nice to sit by my window with music playing just studying Italian, in Italy. Excellent.
After lunch I walked around with Antonio and Grabriele for a while and we talked about the night to come. They had invited me to watch the movie Hitch in English with their English class at 4 so I agreed to go just for something to do, although it seemed a great shame to waste such a nice day. Antonio had invited me at lunch to go with him to White Night which is an event that happens around the entire city of Rome where every public museum and church is open to the public free of charge from 10:00 to 1:00 am. I wanted to go but I had been asked by Francesco to go out with him for the night. Sadly, I declined the invitation. Francesco is part of an online networking service called Coach Surfing. It is basically huge network of people all over the world and you can request to hang out or even stay with someone who lives in a city that you’re travelling to or even have them house you for a night. It’s basically a way to find your way around foreign cities or possible even avoid staying in a hostile. He was picking up two Canadians from the airport who were on a long vacation and coming to Rome from Athens and then we were all meeting two Americans from Babylon, New York.
When were going to leave Francesco told me to change my shirt because he wanted to go out dancing and I did so thinking that dancing sounded fun. Well, we picked up the Canadians which took forever because not only was their flight delayed and the luggage apparently took a long time to come out, but they also came out a completely different exit than Francesco and I expected. So finally we headed for the Center where the Americans were staying. We met up with the Americans but the Canadians still had to check into the hostile that their friend had booked for them. So we left the Americans so they could shower and we found out when we got their that the Canadian’s friend apparently never booked their room and the hostile was full for the night. So drove back across the Center which on a Saturday night during White Night took nearly 35 minutes (and I’m sure it was no more than 3 kilometers). We met back up with the Americans who then proceeded to help the Canadians find a place to stay.
Two hours later…
We finally find a place for the Canadians to stay and it is now 11:15 (Francesco and I have not even since lunch at 1). During the search for logging, the Canadian girl (both couples were boy/girl) started having some kind of reaction on her legs. It started as just some incredibly large bug bites and slightly swollen ankles. By the time we finally made it to a restaurant… 2 hours after seeking one out, her “reaction” as we were calling it, had gotten much worse. She said it didn’t hurt too bad except for when she would bend her ankles too far and her “bites” would split open. Yeah, it really was quite disgusting. Her ankles were at least twice their normal size, huge welts that looked like sacks of pus from a rash like you would get from poison ivy were popping up (and open) all over her calves, ankles and feet, and they would randomly burst open and ooze down her leg and some of the ooze had blood in it and from the swelling (I’m guessing) her feet started turning purple and it was getting hard for her to walk.
We ate an a pretty fancy but not too expensive Mexican style restaurant but since it was already 1 by the time we sat down, the kitchen was getting ready to close and we were all just kind of past our hunger. I was really beginning to hate the Canadians. We ordered three pitchers of sangria and within the first glass and a half, I was already feeling it since I hadn’t eaten in so long. The bill with two appetizers ended up being 47 Euro and Francesco and I both said we would buy a pitcher each. Somehow, he ended up putting in 20 and I put in 10… what? Yeah, I don’t understand either. Another strike against the Canadians. The Americans were very cool and had just finished an 12 day tour of Italy and seemed to be very experienced travelers. I didn’t get the sense that they were a couple, but rather very good friends and were a blast to hang out with (both 24). The Canadian girl was really cool and I felt horrible that she was having this… whatever it was, her first day in Rome and still had 10 days of her trip left. The guy however, was a different story. He apparently wasn’t gay, but I would have laid down money that he was and he fulfilled every stereotype that gives gay men a bad rep. He was loud, out spoken, absent minded, incredibly rude to the girl as he kept laughing at her and saying that “The Europe trip is over,” and just over all being a pain.
After we ate we headed back to the American’s hostile and bid them goodnight and goodbye. Then we went in search of a hospital for Lauren which I would out later, was the real beginning of my night. We went to a hospital in the city arriving after 3 and waited there until a little after 4. This apparently is not the best hospital in Rome and the women who had checked Lauren into triage ended up telling Francesco that we would have better luck at Gemelli which is actually close to Villa. We headed all the way across town and got to Gemelli around 4:30. They took her immediately and did some blood work… that we didn’t get the results for until 7. We took them to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for Lauren, all the while Josh was complaining about how the trip was over and he was going sight seeing with or without Lauren no matter what and I seriously, in my extremely tired and grouchy state, wanted to deck him in the face and make the rest of the trip a lot easier for Lauren.
In the end, we got back to Villa at 7:30 and I was supposed to be heading with a group from Villa to San Paolo in 2 hours for the afternoon. There was just no way I would be able to keep my eyes open through mass and priests talking about the church in Italian. I very sadly scratched my name off the list and went to bed. So that was my night. Instead of seeing every museum that I possibly could in one night, filling myself to the brim with history and culture and things that I might not have the money for later, I spent it with two pretty cool Americans, a gimpy Canadian girl and an incredibly rude, loud and annoying Canadian guy. Not seeing museums, not going dancing, not bar hopping, not meeting more really cool people, not doing what I came here to do since basically the whole night I was actually playing the role of interpreter for Francesco and not speaking a lick of Italian. As much as I tried my hardest to actually enjoy myself and see it as one of those things that would make for a great story later, it really just felt like a waste and it was hard to control my disappointment as the person I really felt for was Francesco who had to do all the driving and paid for more than the should have. There was talk of going to the beach today, but seeing as it is nearly 4, I don’t believe that will happen. I am buying a ticket sometime this week for a trip to Florence next weekend to be sure that not another moment is wasted in this amazing country. Stupid Canadians.